Month: July 2011

Lots of discussiongoing on recently about the affect of 6 week development cycles on binary XPCOM components in add-ons. I don’t want to re-hash those discussions, but Daniel Glazman brought up an interesting point in a comment on Wladimir’s post. Wladimir was suggesting binary component developers start moving to js-ctypes. Daniel pointed out that there are two classes of binary XPCOM components:

XPCOM wrappers around 3rd-party binary libraries: We use this model for exposing external binary functionality into JavaScript so add-ons and applications can access the libraries. Using js-ctypes should provide a simple, non-breaking way to expose the libraries. You create a simple JavaScript wrapper in a JavaScript XPCOM component. We need more examples of using js-ctypes to do this, but it works.

Pure binary XPCOM components built only using the Mozilla platform: Sometimes the functionality you want to expose is actually locked away in the Mozilla platform itself. Maybe there is no public nsIXxx interface or the existing interface has a [noscript] attribute on a property of method. This model shouldn’t be required anymore, in my opinion. Mozilla is pushing JavaScript based components and we should be exposing as much as possible to chrome JavaScript. I would encourage add-on developers to file bugs and lobby to expose binary-only parts of the Mozilla platform to chrome JavaScript.

JavaScript ctypes has come a long, long way since it was started back in 2007. Let’s start leveraging it more. The ctypes model has been used quite effectively in other languages.

Text selection in web content: Long tap in a web page and start selection text using the familiar Android-style drag handles. Since Firefox does not use Android widgets, we had to implement this feature ourselves and there is still some additional work to do in order to make it more robust.

Session history within a tab is saved and restored: If Firefox needs to restore the session, each tab’s back/forward history is restored as well.

Language selection at initial startup: Choose you language right away, instead of wading through screens in a language you might not be able to read. If the Android OS is set to a language Firefox has bundled, the selection screen is skipped and you are taken to the Firefox Home page. If you really wanted to pick a different language, there is a “Choose Language” button on Firefox Home too, but only on the initial startup.

Added a ‘Quit’ action to the Android menu: This was a frequent feature request and low risk to the UI so we added it.

Text selection in action:

Quit menu:

Of course, Mobile Aurora 7 also has the features and optimizations found in the upcoming Firefox for Mobile 6 Beta release. Things like startup and painting speedups, Gingerbread theme, Android menu improvements and more. We’ll post more details about Firefox for Mobile 6 Beta soon.

Mobile Aurora 7 is not in the Android Market. We are considering publishing it along with the Beta and Final releases. Until then, install the latest Mobile Aurora from this download page.